John Thain Is the New Villain of Wall Street

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It’s official: Former Merrill Lynch CEO, John Thain, the man once credited with “revolutionizing” the New York Stock Exchange and Goldman Sachs, is the new most-hated man on Wall Street. Across the board this week, coverage of his $1.2 million office redecoration and his subsequent forced resignation was infused with disgust. In review,briefly:

• “Mr. Thain’s behind-scenes-lobbying for his own bonus turned into a public embarrassment. Most Wall Street chief executives, under fire for big mortgage losses, went without bonuses in 2008. But Mr. Thain lobbied his board’s compensation committee for a multimillion dollar bonus, arguing that he helped repair Merrill and had engineered the sale to Bank of America.” [WSJ]

• “This was symbolic of a pattern that has developed on Wall Street over this past decade of more and more extravagant, more and more lavish, more and more one-upmanship in all of these visible symbols. This may be the last vestige of a culture that we’re not going to see for many years to come.” [Bloomberg]